About

The "670CS" Project..

Published:

The “670CS” Project…

After three collaborative exhibitions on the theme of disability; at Thalam (http://www.thalam.in), DreamADream (http://dreamadream.org), and APD (http://apd-india.org) with Neha Utmani (http://nehautmani.blogspot.in/), I** was on the lookout for more disabilities related data. In our earlier exhibitions we displayed cut-outs of newspaper and magazine articles/stories related to Persons with Disabilities (PwD) alongside our artworks. This time, the focus was on gathering statistical & pictorial information available in charts, graphs, and on maps etc., For this, I visited a few libraries, and at one of them, the librarian provided me the link where Census 2011 data on disabilities was published in a spreadsheet* form.

This spreadsheet has data on disabilities for each State/UT, and for each of the districts as well; with age groups, and eight types of disabilities. I visualized these numbers in various ways. In Project 670CS, here are 3 takes on the total number of PwDs in India. In each of the photographs, there is data for a State/UT (with a tree representing a State/UT).

Let us look at this data in 3 different ways:

(1) Percentage of PwDs to total Indian population (per Census 2011) is 2.21%

(more than the entire population of Sri Lanka and Singapore put together?).

A family with “ONE” PwD undergoes various kinds of difficulties. Now think about the families/guardians/caretakers of all the 26 million PwDs, not considering the difficulties faced by the PwDs themselves. In a conversation, when one says “less than 3%”, it may come across as a small number. (we can imagine the situation and the subject where we discuss percentages). It’s not the same, when the percentage is about PwDs?

(3) The seating capacity at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium (Bengaluru-INDIA) can accommodate around 40,000 people. Imagine the stadium filled with spectators at its full capacity during an IPL Cricket match.